Wichita State - in or out?

[TheAsianSensation]

I might as well keep a running list in this thread as well. This is always subject to review and change as I tinker with it, but currently:

Into the lockbox:
Seton Hall
Wisconsin
Colorado
Providence
USC
Texas Tech

Bubble in:
South Carolina
St Bonaventure
Pittsburgh
Butler
St Mary's***

Next 4 in:
Syracuse
Monmouth
Wichita St
St Joseph's

Last 4 in:
Vanderbilt
Gonzaga
Cincinnati
UConn

Last 4 out:
Oregon St
Michigan
Tulsa
VCU

Next 4 out:
Valparaiso
Florida St
Florida
Temple***
Houston

Deep bubble:
San Diego St***
Hofstra
Georgia Tech
Ohio St
Washington
George Washington
Alabama
Arkansas-Little Rock***

[goramblers2011]

CBS Podcast "Eye on College Basketball" is calling WSU the most controversial bubble team in modern history.

Lunardi has them as a 7 seed. Palm has them as OUT. That is a HUGE gap. But Palm doesn't even consider KenPom (which is idiotic) and Lunardi tends to place too much emphasis on it.

I think they will be playing in Dayton as part of the First 4. But this largely depends on how things shake out in conference tourneys this week and weekend.

[UNIFanSince1983]

Lunardi now has WSU moved down to 8 while he has UNI up to 12.

UNI playing ole Cuonzo Martin as well. That would be interesting with Wes playing against his old coach at Tennessee and UNI against MSU's old coach.

Also just noticed that WSU would get to play #1 seed Kansas in the 2nd round again. I am sure Jayhawk fans would love that.

[PurpleAcesFootball]

This time yesterday I thought for sure WSU would be "in". Monmouth and Valpo losing makes things a whole lot murkier, IMO.

The thing with the committee is that - well they are a committee. 2 or 3 people rotate off from year to year so you never know for sure how much emphasis they will put on the injury to FVV. I still think WSU makes it, and one of Valpo and Monmouth.

In an ideal world, all 3 would make it and leave out teams like Pittsburgh and Syracuse. Anything that results in Jim "we only play in New York in the preseason" Boeheim whining about being treated unfairly is good for basketball.

In a weird way, WSU making the NCAAs may help UE slide into an NIT bid.

[Play Angry]

Wichita St vs. Monmouth. Tale of the tape.

Wichita St (24-8) (16-2) RPI 48 SoS 105
Vital signs: 10-7 R/N, non-con SoS 11, 1-3 vs. Top 50, 4-7 vs. Top 100
Signature wins: Utah, @UNI, UEx2
Bad losses: @Illinois St is the worst, which isn't exactly all that horrible

Monmouth (27-7) (17-3) RPI 47 SoS 176
Vital signs: 17-5 R/N, non-con SoS 93, 2-2 vs. Top 50, 4-3 vs. Top 100
Signature wins: N-Notre Dame and USC, @UCLA, @Iona
Bad losses: Army, Canisius, Manhattan, all roadies

Wichita has the SoS checkmark, although Monmouth isn't a disaster here. Both scheduled the same MTT OOC.

Wichita probably has the best win, depending about how you feel about how tough neutral site games are compared to home games. Monmouth has a better depth of wins. Monmouth has 4 Top 100 wins but 7 Top 105 wins. Wichita has 7 Top 125 wins to match Monmouth's 7. Basically, what I'm saying is to be careful when using cutoff points when comparing wins. The difference? Wichita has 5 home wins and 2 road wins in their 7, but Monmouth has 4 road wins and 2 neutrals in their 7.

Road/neutral record: Look at Monmouth! 22 games! 17 is a ridiculous number. Now, we see the horrible losses on the road. My counter: you realize how tough it is on the road, right? Are you saying Monmouth needs to go 20-2 in road/neutral games in order to not get criticized? If you gave any team in the country, ANY team, 22 road/neutral games, I'd guarantee there's be at least 2 ugly losses in there. Not maybe as ugly as sub-200 RPI, but still.

Boy, it's close. But I think the committee in the past has been aggressive about rewarding road schedules. Bottom line: not good for Wichita to have to go against this resume. The more teams on the bubble with few signature wins and strong schedules are bad for Wichita, because that's their strengths. Wichita needs to be dealing with power conference teams with ugly records, not this one.

This is a thoughtful analysis, although as mentioned above it completely neglects advanced metrics. It also fails to address VanVleet's absence due to injury for a good portion of the schedule segments you analyze. This will absolutely be factored in.

Basically, you give the edge to Monmouth by a smidge with an incomplete analysis. The parts you have left out weigh heavily in WSU's factor.

I would re-think your approach. Not trying to be a toolbag, as I always appreciate your annual bracketology efforts.

[GrandpaBear]

The committee won't assume WSU would have won those games when he was out. And the only metric helping WSU is Ken Pom and the fact that they are nearly in the Top 10 of that ranking sort of negates how valid it really is.

[TheAsianSensation]

This is a thoughtful analysis, although as mentioned above it completely neglects advanced metrics. It also fails to address VanVleet's absence due to injury for a good portion of the schedule segments you analyze. This will absolutely be factored in.

Basically, you give the edge to Monmouth by a smidge with an incomplete analysis. The parts you have left out weigh heavily in WSU's factor.

I would re-think your approach. Not trying to be a toolbag, as I always appreciate your annual bracketology efforts.

Well I wasn't trying to post a complete analysis, I was trying to hit the points that aren't getting as much attention. Writing to my audience. Should've been more clear that was what I was doing. And actually, based on the parts I did write up, I thought it was somewhat clear that Monmouth was ahead by a solid margin on those fronts, and it was the metrics and the injuries that brought Wichita back to even with Monmouth.

It's tricky to figure out the impact of VanVleet's injuries. It matters, but it's can't act as a hall pass either. Throwing out those 3 games is fine, but that also means throwing out a significant portion of the SoS value in Wichita's resume. Part of Wichita's value is in a tough schedule, but if we're ignoring those 3 games, we have to ignore the totality of them.

Metrics is just a difficult thing to analyze because this situation is a true outlier, and we have almost no committee data to go off of. No track record. We don't know how much the metrics will truly move a team up or down, because the metrics are usually within ballpark range of the total value of a resume for every team. Not in this case. Lunardi is on one extreme and Palm the other; the answer is in the middle but exactly where is unknown to me.

And to be completely fair, if we're all playing injury cards, Monmouth might get to play one for Deon Jones and the one home loss on the Monmouth resume.

[TheAsianSensation]

This time yesterday I thought for sure WSU would be "in". Monmouth and Valpo losing makes things a whole lot murkier, IMO.

The thing with the committee is that - well they are a committee. 2 or 3 people rotate off from year to year so you never know for sure how much emphasis they will put on the injury to FVV. I still think WSU makes it, and one of Valpo and Monmouth.

In an ideal world, all 3 would make it and leave out teams like Pittsburgh and Syracuse. Anything that results in Jim "we only play in New York in the preseason" Boeheim whining about being treated unfairly is good for basketball.

In a weird way, WSU making the NCAAs may help UE slide into an NIT bid.

Wichita's status won't have an impact on Evansville one way or the other. In fact, things have gotten a bit nuclear for Evansville the last couple of days with all the NIT bids disappearing to conference champions. We're not going to have a team in the NIT this year.

[TheAsianSensation]

The committee won't assume WSU would have won those games when he was out. And the only metric helping WSU is Ken Pom and the fact that they are nearly in the Top 10 of that ranking sort of negates how valid it really is.

No. In fact, looking at the top 11 right now, in order:

Virginia, Kansas, MSU, Nova, UNC, WVU, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Indiana, L'ville, Wichita

then: Miami, Arizona, Xavier, Oregon, Purdue, Iowa, Iowa St, SMU, Duke

Among the top 20, that's essentially the top 5 seed lines, plus 2 ineligible teams and Wichita. Wichita being the only outlier is actually a big strength for Wichita, because every other team ranked high makes sense. If we had a stray St Mary's or Texas Tech or a team like that in the top 20, that would be a problem for Wichita. Being the only outlier is huge for them.

[UNIFanSince1983]

This time yesterday I thought for sure WSU would be "in". Monmouth and Valpo losing makes things a whole lot murkier, IMO.

The thing with the committee is that - well they are a committee. 2 or 3 people rotate off from year to year so you never know for sure how much emphasis they will put on the injury to FVV. I still think WSU makes it, and one of Valpo and Monmouth.

In an ideal world, all 3 would make it and leave out teams like Pittsburgh and Syracuse. Anything that results in Jim "we only play in New York in the preseason" Boeheim whining about being treated unfairly is good for basketball.

In a weird way, WSU making the NCAAs may help UE slide into an NIT bid.

Wichita's status won't have an impact on Evansville one way or the other. In fact, things have gotten a bit nuclear for Evansville the last couple of days with all the NIT bids disappearing to conference champions. We're not going to have a team in the NIT this year.

Yeah Evansville really needed the regular season champs from some of the smaller conferences to win their tournaments. Valpo and Monmouth losing hurts them for sure.